Chapter 412: ROUS with a Rusty disposition.
=Lacerage, I hate to be a bother, but do you have any plans of letting my counterpart go anytime soon?,= Logos asked as Lacerage adjusted her position from a chokehold into a backbreaker.
=Take that as a no…=
Whatever his emotional counterpart had done to anger the two nanny kaijin, Logos was at least sixty-five percent sure it didn’t warrant this much abuse.
The remaining thirty-five percent was doubt based on knowing Pathos for literal centuries.
They had a habit of causing mayhem, it was only safe to assume that this was the case again.
As Logos stared at the continuing physical affliction, they eventually felt a small tug at their sleeve. The source of this tugging was none other than Janice, with her brother Japser standing nearby.
“Teacher Logos?,” the girl asked cutely, “what’s the lace lady doing to Teacher Pathos?”
After being delivered to the Library of Nowhere, Jasper and Janice were quickly introduced to Logos and Pathos, but since it’s consider improper for them to be on a first basis yet, Logos suggested that the two of them call her Teacher Logos and Pathos, Teacher Pathos.
So far, it seemed to work.
=Well, miss Janice, what you are witnessing is known as the philosophy of karma.=
“Karma?”
=There is a belief system that states that when people die, they don’t go to an afterlife. Instead, they get reincarnated into a new life. Whatever actions they do, good or bad, it will affect something that is known as ‘karma’ and depending on how this karma is treated, it will determine how one’s next reincarnation will pan out.=
“Huh?”
=All that said though, many people use the term as a catch-all term for the phrase ‘consequences of one’s actions’, more or less.=
“Oh…”
“Is that why the ‘TV’ thing Teacher Pathos set up started blinking red?”
=Yes…wait a minute, what?=
________________________________________________
“Burp!”
As soon as it finished eating the hammer’s metallic head, the giant rat beast immediately dropped what was left, namely the wooden handle, and released a loud, metallic-smelling belch.
Zhen Jin, Zhen Guo and Zhen Xing were all mildly disgusted by the smell, since it reminded them of raw blood mixed with a touch of old copper coins.
The mechanical rat beast proceeded to sniff the air once more, before returning to it’s initial target of interest, the broken cage that the Tri-Tailed Peacock was in.
As it did, Zhen Jin reminded his son and nephew to get out of here and look for help again.
“But father,” Zhen Xing protested via whispers, “it’s just a weird rat thing. Can’t the three of us take it down together? Or at least, shouldn’t you come with us.”
“Normally I’d say yes,” Zhen Jin answered, “but something about this rodent beast doesn’t feel right. It’s giving off the aura of a third tier aether beast for sure, but… there’s something else to it. Besides, you saw how it ate that hammer? How it’s eating that cage? The damn thing can eat metal and unfortunately, this ship has a surprising amount of it. If I leave it alone, it will probably try to eat the ship next. Someone’s gotta keep this thing distracted.”
Zhen Xing was just about to protest further, until Zhen Guo stopped him, placing a hand on the former’s shoulder with a pleading look in his eyes.
While Zhen Guo didn’t say much, the message was pretty implicit: they’d only get in the way.
Zhen Xing hesitated for a bit before, finally agreeing to leave.
“Okay… we’ll be back as soon as possible father, be safe.”
“Of course.”
Zhen Xing and Zhen Guo quickly made their way back up the stairs and out of the cargo hold, leaving behind elder Zhen Jin to deal with the oversized mechanical rodent.
Once his son and nephew had left the room and shut the door behind them, Zhen Jin took a deep breath as he planned out his offensive.
Green tinted aether that carried the feeling of roses and forests began to swirl around Zhen Jin’s fingers. At the same time, an inconspicuous pouch that he kept on his belt began to glow that same green color.
‘I’ve taken down boars, bison and runner drakes before, but a rat…will my tricks work the same?’
As the strange metallic flesh rat ate the last of the cage and began to sniff around for presumably more metal, Zhen Jin came to a decision.
‘I’ll never know if I don’t try…have at the!’
Zhen Jin plunged a hand a into the pouch on his side and pulled out several seeds, each appearing to have a meticulously painted array on their tiny surfaces, and scattered them about. As they fell, Zhen Jin rushed forward, thorny vines made of aether manifesting around his clutched fist.
[Thorn Smash!]
________________________________________________
[So this is what being in accessory mode feels like? Hmmm.]
‘What? Not a big fan of it?’
[Not exactly…wish I could use my legs, but I understand the need for subtlety…regretfully.]
‘Ah.’
After picking up Archanidame from the Library of Nowhere, Zhen Liu had her enter accessory mode in order to keep her appearance on the ship a secret.
That being said, Archanidame took on the form of a rather flamboyant spider-shaped brooch that rested snugly on Zhen Liu’s clothes.
It went along with the rest of his outfit just fine, especially since he had already established a reputation of wearing gaudy jewelry that were actually his demonically strong puppets, but that was besides the point.
As of this moment, he and Archanidame were in the middle of making their way towards the location of his uncle, Zhen Jin. Normally, Jin Fang and Rianna would tag along too, but the former was summoned by Zhen Liu’s mother to help with something, while the latter was scheduled to practice her saber routine.
‘Alright, if I remember correctly the cargo hold should be-‘
“Shit! Do you remember where the other uncles were fishing?”
“I think it was, uh…”
“Gah! Doesn’t matter! You go that way, I go this way, we’ll send them here when we find them!”
“That’s…okay!’
‘-huh?’
As soon as Zhen Liu turned a corner, he saw this cousins, Zhen Guo and Zhen Xing were in the middle of some kind of panic as they ran out of the door presumably leading to the cargo hold.
The two of them then proceeded to run off in opposite directions of each other, which in Zhen Liu’s perspective meant that one, Zhen Guo, was running away from him while the other, Zhen Xing, was running straight towards him.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit!”
Zhen Xing was evidently so distraught over…whatever he was running from, that he failed to notice Zhen Liu standing there and bolted right pass him.
“Hey! What’s going-wait a minute…”
Zhen Liu was just about to call out to him, asking what’s wrong, until he noticed two distinctive energies spiking coming from the cargo hold those two just left from.
One was the distinctive aether of his uncle, Zhen Jin. It had a distinctively “woody” feel to it, the same as a manicured garden or a zen forest.
The other was also aether weirdly metallic and hungry, but at the same time…it had the distinctive edge of [Chaos] to it.
‘Godsdamnit…’
Zhen Liu let out a deep sigh as he realized that his “good deed” of repairing this ship had another unintended consequence added on top of it.
A part of him had hoped it wasn’t his fault that this happened, but then a certain voice of logic and reason chimed in.
________________________________________________
=Milord, I’m sorry to interrupt your power-up plan, but-=
‘There is some kind of [Chaos] tainted monstrosity running around on the ship?’
=There’s, wait…how did you already know that?=
‘Because I just felt it’s energy spike coming from the cargo hold, where it’s presumably fighting my uncle to the death.’
=Oh…well then, that cuts that explanation short. You should probably know then that the cause of this disturbance is a giant rat tainted with [Chaos]. I have been tentatively been calling it a Rust Rodent.=
‘Gross. Two things, one, is it safe to assume that this Rust Rodent that my uncle is fighting appeared due to us missing something when we fixed the ship?’
=Running theory is that we accidentally tainted a rodent or some kind of grain that the rodent then ate, yes.=
‘Sounds about right, second thing, is the reason why it’s just you contacting me is because Pathos is still in the middle of being choked out a like a bronze belt jobber?’
=More or less, but Lacerage is no longer choking her out at this point?=
‘Oh?’
=It’s hard to explain, but it appears she is now holding Pathos’s arms down as she uses her legs to push his torso forward? I feel like there’s a name for this, but I forget what it is…=
‘Okay, neat. By the way, tell the kaijin to keep clear of the cargo hold, I’m going to use this as an opportunity.’
=Of course mi-wait, what?=
